Interview Kickstart

I must admit that I didn't make it into FAANG or any fancy companies but that is a fault of my own for not continuing with a couple interviews I had lined up. Coming from the experience of a coding bootcamp with no CS background, it was pretty difficult learning everything I needed to in the short amount of time. That being said, the instruction was really good and I learned so much about better engineering and still apply the knowledge I gained from Interview Kickstart in problems I encounter at work. I would like to do a second run through it some time but I currently enjoy the company I'm at and the salary that they pay me. If you're on the fence, I'd say to go for it though it will take a lot of studying and commitment. If i had one negative thing to say about this program, it is that I had a difficult time understanding teachers with heavy accents but I believe this program does make you ready for FAANGlike interviews. It is up to you to follow through and make it worthwhile. Read less

Interview Kickstart offers a comprehensive program to succeed in technical and management interviews. It helps you build a problem solving mindset, offers very rich foundational material (arguably even better than what you learned in college), introduces typical interview problems, offers technical and behavioral coaching sessions and mock interviews from industry experts. The structured curriculum helps you create a plan, rather than just randomly solving leetcode problems! Read less

@IK - DS/Algo track 
- Course was well designed and structured including assignment and reviews, from industry experts
- Class session were recorded, so can revisit those, if things were not clear 
- resume review with industry expert were also helpful, helped me highlight my skill in a more presentable format
- Problem solving session were also help full, instructor do explain and go over problem before solution and that clear up lot of concept and mistake a interview candidate would have made while approaching a problem

Overall experience I had was great with IK , would recommend if one is facing challenge to crack ds/algo interviews

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I came to know about interview kickstart from my mentor. Before joining interview kickstart, I had solved around 450-500 questions on leetcode and I was able to reach the onsite interview stage for big tech companies but I could not crack their onsite interviews. I always felt nervous before my interviews and used to think whether the interviewer will ask the question which I have solved during my practice or not. 
When I joined interview kickstart, I was impressed by their organized course structure. The foundational videos on Sorting, Recursion, Trees, Graphs and Dynamic Programming by Omkar sir are excellent. Also, I benefitted from the mock interviews and the feedback I received on my mock interviews performance. As a result, I developed confidence in my interview skills and I was able to get offers from Microsoft & Amazon. I am thankful to the whole IK family and would like to give credit to them for my success. Read less

IK provides a great platform to organize your thoughts around interview process. It provides deep understanding of preparation complexity and time frame along with the breadth of different aspects of the interview. It teaches many value systems which are paramount to be an engineer like understanding of  different designs and scale issues. These skills are mandatory in today's SDLC to be successful and make progression as a software engineer.  Read less

Pros:

1. Curriculum was designed exceptionally well. Topics were in line with the trends expected by the high tech industry.
2. The pattern of introducing concepts as foundational material, then following by examples through live classes worked really well.
3. The live classes were conducted by professionals from the industry - this is a huge plus. As these were interactive, a wealth of valuable information was shared.
4. The quality of instruction is top notch - both foundation material & live classes.
5. Access to the instruction is available for good, which makes this really valuable. It can serve as a reference material for the entire career.
6. Up-level as a sandbox environment for the code examples is an excellent choice. All the solutions to the exercise can be archived with memory consumed and running time.
7. Up-level also archives all the instruction in a chronological order (based on time), so acts as a one stop shop.
8. The leadership workshop was very valuable. Talking to the actual professionals working in the industry gave an opportunity to retrospect, and calibrate on the attributes of a good leader. 
9. It was an action packed, dynamic, high paced computer science bootcamp that was enjoyable.
10. The support period is really a well thought out idea, and is an icing on the cake. It provides a feedback loop where we could recalibrate and improve.

Cons:

1. The live system design classes could have followed a template and better time managed (part of them had an ad hoc feel to it). 

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I started with Interview Kickstart (IK) in early 2021 February to prepare for Data Engineer interviews. Immediately I liked the IK approach. In my experience, their instructors and the content are the best. I took their advice and applied for tier 3 companies and got an offer by early July. I strongly recommend IK for the tech interview preparation. Read less

I am a current student(Developer role) of IK and here is my experience so far. The program is very well designed to crack programming interviews and it uplevels the thought process in problem solving skills.
Course layout is structured in such a way that it navigates students from basic level to advanced levels week over week.
The classroom experience is highly professional and it gave me an opportunity to meet other students in the same path, so that we can discuss with each other and motivates each other towards goal.
Their floater sessions continuously educate students on new problems and new practices in problem solving.
Overall this program helped my velocity on problem solving skills and boosted my confidence levels also.
When I attended their orientation, IK founder said that “he believes in this structured way of teaching programming concepts and system design concepts” and “he does not know that if this program does not help, what else helps. It should work”. When I go through their material, classes and problems, those words told by founder always reflect and echoes.
I wish I could have come to know about this program earlier. It is never too late and I strongly recommend this program. Read less

As an experienced Engineering Manager, I was very skeptical of any interview prep courses. After all, I interviewed people for a living. However, after a few unsuccessful attempts, at a couple of FAANG companies, I realized that I needed some help in building a structured approach towards preparing for interviews, specifically for the technical rounds. I had not been actively coding in the recent past and needed to devote time to brush up on data structures  and algorithms and recognizing patterns to solve problems in a systematic manner. After researching all available options for prep, I settled on Interview Kickstart and I am glad I did! For sure the course is not cheap, but having a structured curriculum with in-person instruction and a cohort of students that I could discuss problems with was invaluable. It definitely required a lot of time commitment from my end as the course was really fast-paced, but it kept me disciplined and time-boxed my preparation.  The curriculum is very comprehensive and laddered well.  Some of the instructors, especially Omkar Deshpande, are fantastic and they really helped me recognize patterns for tackling coding problems and build an approach towards solving them. The mock interviews were also very essential in practicing for the system design problems. 

On the flip side, there is also room for some improvement. The quality of instructors can vary, but for the most part they are pretty good. The virtual classroom setting (as I did the course during Covid) with a lot of students, is a bit limiting in terms of interactivity and I found myself with questions sometimes that I had to follow up later on. The user interface could also use some improvement as I could easily bookmark favorite sessions or annotate videos for faster reference later. I would also have preferred more practice problems or link to other practice problems in Leetcode (or other online prep) for each of the sections.

Overall, I would still recommend this course for anyone who is serious about preparing for technical interviews.  Read less

Interview Kickstart is a really good place to start to improve your interview skills as a software engineer.
Short description:
if you failed many interviews before, or have no idea what's wrong, this is the right place to start.
Long answer:
Success rate:
I don't know the real success rate. They said it was 99% but I doubt it. From my batch, porbably 20-30 people, I know at least 2 guys got the offer (from the discord channel), I also got an offer (so at least 3), but I did not write anything there. So I guess there were more people got offers. 
Community:
There are two places you can discuss. One forum and one discord channel.
The Forum is kind buggy, especially when you go there through email links. Some questions are posted and answered by students but they are not very active.
The discord was somehow more active. Usually those who were very active would input some messages in discord. But TBH, the channel was not that active. Usually I use discord to contact the IK operations for support. The support were slow sometimes, but they would get to you.
Courses:
Part of the courses are videos only, Part of the courses are live. The course quality is extramely good. I do recommand those.
Mock terviews are also very good. They have a lot of interviewer from different companeis. Most of them are good, but I did meet one interviewer that was pretty bad and didn't give good comments. But it's rare case. Sometimes you would meet an mock interviewer that was not very experienced, but it looked fine to me. I got one referral from one of the interviewer and got the offer.
Other support:
There are a lot of supoort. I did not use a lot of them. I knew there were coding support, Leet code problem, and behavioral interview, compensation negotiation, resume suggestion, etc. You can find one appointment and talk to them in a reasonable time.
Cost:
I took the full course, it cost like more than 6k. Is it worth it? IDK. I got an offer for 200k+ so I think it should. And you have 15 mock interview chances. The materials are usually up-to-date, (at least within 2 years). So I think this one is reasonable. I think they also have policy to refund partial of it if you were not hired. Read less

After 10 years of stint at my current job, I wanted to apply for a new job, but looked at the landscape of the interviewing process, and it changed over the last 10 years dramatically. I spent some time in leetcode solving problems, and it was never enough without having a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts. As I was exploring options to improve my skills, I luckily came across Interview Kickstart, through a referral of my ex-colleague and joined without hesitation.

The master class material videos are top-notch and goes into very basics of why things are done one way vs other and that helps to get ready to face questions that one hasn't come across. Even though it's only 8 classes (some classes going well over 7 hours), the course is very intensive and needs extra time to internalize. Social media related System design problems are very new to me, and the template Interview Kickstart uses to peel it away helps tremendously. The best part of the course is mock interviews, and they really help finding smaller mistakes that one wouldn't pay much attention to, and it's an iterative process.

Thank you IK! Read less

Once the course material is covered by a student, clearing an interview will become a byproduct and the student is bound to become a better engineer to perform a software engineering role. A student will not only end up solving about 250 to 300 coding questions across various topics but also learn how to approach any coding problem from scratch. Any session taken by Omkar Deshpande is brilliant and starts from the fundamentals. The technical coaching sessions, mock coding interviews strengthen your interviewing skills and remove interviewing jitters. The support staff is great and overall this program provides great career coaching for Engineers aspiring to work at FAANG companies. Read less

The interview preparation course at IK is very relevant and comprehensive. Here are few things I liked about it. 

1) Content: It's current and very relevant. The course operates on 80-20 strategy. While it focuses on 20% of content that matters in 80% of the interview scenarios, it also provides support to student who want to explore more through floater and coaching sessions.

2) Instructors: They know the stuffs that they teach really well. They are very engaging. 

3) Operations: They are there for your success. Each of the students are assigned an SSA (Student Success Advocate) who guides students throughout the period. And they are good at it. 

4) Beyond coding: There system design goes through fundamentals to advance topics currently asked in interviews. They are even more useful if you are applying for levels seniors and above. They also have some really good content on behavioral aspects of interview such as offer negotiations, resume, and linked in profile guidance, etc. 

Though the program contents are really good, it does not guarantee a job.  Here are some strategies that I personally believe a student can do to get the best out of the program. 

1)      More you put in, the better you are. The program is not a silver bullet in itself.2)      Mock interviews: Mock interviews are taken by engineers, engineering managers, leaders, and executives from top software companies. I have found there reviews very helpful. Iteratively, I have been personally able to improve a lot by addressing feedbacks from previous mocks.  

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I had a great experience with IK. The instruction was online since my cohort started in Feb 2020 when the pandemic had just taken hold. I really wish it could have been in person, but it was still a great experience online.

You can watch live lecture and ask questions, as well as review old lecture videos. Because it was for material that I hadn't covered since college, I had some difficulty and had to watch lecture videos multiple times. What was also helpful was the office hours. 

They had coding office hours, as well as a lot of drop-in slots for other counseling services to help you with your experience. 
These really helped it feel much more structured. I even took away new methods of goal-planning during career counseling sessions, thanks to Fanny. 

My one other nitpick was that as a data engineer, the program was a little overkill on the coding side in my experience, and not enough data engineering specific questions. However, I know that IK now has domain-specific programs so I would definitely recommend, especially if you hadn't gotten the chance to truly do ETL work for a while despite having a DE title (it happens!) Read less

I had many doubts about the success of the program initially prior to enrollment but I knew I needed "something" to change my future interview outcome after failing on amazon and fb, so I bit the bullet and I enrolled to Interview Kickstart (IK) with expectation for my knowledge to grow.

 It didn't disappoint me. The program (DS and Sys Design classes) could fill the gap on my knowledge, the career program definitely brought my resume and profile to more recruiter's attention and the best of all I finally got an offer. I never knew I could be at this stage a year ago. 

The investment to join the program is definitely worth it and it will return you many folds with the offer.

Was it an easy journey after joining IK to finally get an offer? It was absolutely not (at least to me). However, Hard work (keep learning), IK support and persistence would bring you closer to that offer you have been dreaming about and if I could do it, so can you.

Thank you IK! Read less

This program has a very well researched and updated curriculum. What I really liked is that the curriculum tries to cover the breadth of topics and patterns. One should consider IK if they are looking for a structure to their preparation, it definitely beats mindlessly solving problems on LC. Shout out to Omkar, the director at IK, for not only putting the entire program together, but also being a super super instructor. Worth every penny.   Read less